Foamed soap has become extremely popular. Foamed soap is dispensed by wall-mounted dispensers generally in commercial applications, such as in restrooms or hospitals, or by hand-held or upright countertop dispensers. The hand-held dispensers are popular because they, unlike wall-mounted dispensers, may easily be transported to different areas of need and then easily disposed of. Hand-held dispensers may be used in the growing home healthcare and food handling locations and thus cover a broader range of traditional hand washing uses then wall-mounted dispensers.
Hand-held foam soap dispensers operate by use of a pump that differs from a conventional liquid dispensing pump by receiving liquid soap from a soap container, combining the liquid soap with air, and dispensing the liquid and air combination as a foam. These foam pumps thus typically include many discrete parts, are mechanically and structurally more complex than liquid pumps, and require more assembly stages than are required for a conventional liquid pump. The number of parts and assembly stages increase the cost and time required to manufacture a foam pump for a hand-held dispenser.